Projects on the Move

Authors and editors can use EtherPad to edit a column online in real time. Then, anything they can’t handle in writing, they can discuss in detail by launching Mumble.

At the end of 2009, howls of protest resounded through the Internet when Google acquired the popular EtherPad platform and announced its plans: The developers of EtherPad would be investing their know-how in Google Wave. This sealed the fate of EtherPad and the switch was scheduled for March 2010. Google seemed to hope to convince former EtherPad users of the virtues of Google Wave. But sometimes even Google’s wishes are not fulfilled; instead, a wave of protest crashed against the Google fortress. Meanwhile, an EtherPad community gathered, and they were not prepared to abandon their EtherPad speedboat for the ponderous Google Wave battleship.

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The Californian Software company Appjet has been added to Google’s Wave team. Appjet’s collaborative Web editor Etherpad was initially supposed to be scrapped, but is now planned for Open Source release.